My birthday is still almost two months away but she found a really good deal on it (used but in good condition) and was too excited to wait. Plus we don’t really have anywhere to hide it for that long without me accidentally finding it anyway.

I’m still learning how to use it but it’s been fun so far. My first two shots (yesterday) weren’t great, my third (today) turned out a lot better, and my fourth was nearly perfect. Still too inconsistent to be confident yet but I’m enjoying the learning process. I’ve heard the GCP is user upgradable, I may look into that in the future. I’ve read that upgrading the over pressure valve is a big upgrade, as is a brass boiler, but that’s for future me to think about, right now I still want to learn how to use it. I’ve also read about Gaggimate and Gaggiuino which seem really interesting. Again, I’ll do that rabbit hole in the future. I know there’s lots of gadgets and stuff for espresso too, that’s something else I’ll want to get into in the future, but for right now I’m really having fun just trying to figure out pull time, heat up time, grind size, etc. My wife is also having a ton of fun with it.

Also, I know there’s no scale in the picture but I do use one, I just figured the picture would look nicer staged like this.

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[–] 1 point 6 minutes ago

Hey I have the same one and it was a birthday gift. I use it every day for 2 years and its beautiful. Grab some puro and deacale it every month. The first upgrade to help with consistency should be a burr grinder. I waited too long, and I gotta say it is a beautiful thing. I no longer pull watery shots. Secondly ali express has decent espresso tools for cheap, like distributers spring loaded Tamps, dosing rings, baskets, tamping stations and screens.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 hour ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 37 minutes ago

    Gotta learn to make some good cappuccino art to surprise her back now!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

    Hell yeah! Congrats, that’s a great machine

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  • [–] 5 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

    I'm happy for you, this is great. Also, Happy Early Birthday.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

    Great machine, congrats

    Tbh imo the best upgrades at first are less costly and much easier. You can get a shorter drip tray for like $12 and that makes using a scale much much easier. An open portafilter can be expensive but cheap ones exist too. Mine was like $30 and works fine, a good basket is like $10-20.

    The opv mod is often not necessary depending on your model year but if it is that’s worthwhile because it’s dirt cheap (like a $3 spring) and simple to do.

    after that imo a good grinder is where you should go if you don’t already have one. I recently got a Chinese grinder (mines branded mokkom but it exists under several names) that has 64mm flat burrs for like $150, which is crazy bc the next cheapest grinder with 64mm flat burrs is like $500. I’ve used it for a couple of months now and it performs well

    The gaggiuino/gaggimate/pid stuff is really nice to have (I have gaggiuino installed, fwiw) but imo it makes more sense to get to know the machine well first. You don’t need any of this to make good coffee as you’ve found out. These help make it more repeatable and work better with things like lighter roasts

    The brass boiler imo isn’t worth it. If your boiler is pitted a new aluminum boiler is like $30 whereas brass is over $200. If it’s not pitted you’re fine. If you have one of the ones from the few years they did a coated aluminum boiler they’ll probably replace it for free fyi. If you have one from one of those years (I think 2019? Could be wrong) steam into an empty cup after the boiler has sat a few days. If there’s a bunch of black flakes in it e-mail gaggia and they’ll likely replace it because they got a shitload of bad press for this issue

    Again, congratulations. IMO the gaggia is the peak machine. Super simple construction and parts available everywhere so it can run smoothly basically forever, easy to repair, and it can make espresso on par with machines 5-10x the price with a few (relatively) simple mods. Even without those imo it outperforms everything in its price class once you get the hang of using it.

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